Ladies and gentlemen, hello, and thank you for being with us. Thank you for having accepted the invitation to attend the publishing of our first half results for 2021. Before we start today's presentation, I would like to introduce you all to Philippe Melies, our new Chairman of the Board, and I would like to welcome him and I will now hand over the floor to Mr. Melies. Helve, thank you very much.
It is a pleasure for me to be here today. I am the new kid on the block, so to speak. I joined the Board on the 30th June this year. So I have been here for just on 1 month, but I have been working so much to come up to speed with everything that Solocal does and I am feeling quite comfortable. Along with Herve, CEO and myself as Chairman of the Board, the 2 of us, we will open up a new chapter for Solocal, Because we are like peas in a pod in that we are both practical minded, we aren't one for great promises and big statements.
We really want to focus on what the teams want, and that's what Solocal needs today. I held the 1st board meeting just yesterday and I wanted to really breathe a new sense of demanding requirements that is so necessary for the success of SOLOQUAL in the coming years months. And obviously Herve is fully on board with carrying business forward and there's a lot of work cut out for him and he'll tell us about the results in just a few moments. Just a few quick words about my past and my career. I have been one to rework and transform a major industrial companies such as Alstom Transport, a diamond production company De Beers and also a major European leader for industrial vehicles.
So as you can see that I have quite a broad experience in a number of businesses and I have considerable experience also in governance, in corporate governance, be it in France or in Great Britain. So I have quite a number of qualities and experience from my own career that I will be able to best utilize to help Herve bring the project to fruition. Herve has considerable experience in managerial positions at high levels in number of industries that is so important for us, especially when it comes to focusing on improving our clients in introducing and improving the efficiency of our sales teams, be it at Dynapost, Mediapost, Lyrico or Teleperformance. And I think our joint experience work well together hand in hand in boosting growth for Solocal in the future. Today, we want to focus on customers.
We want to focus on the lifeblood of Solocal, be it our sales force teams, our technical teams, our service teams, to be able to create further value in the future, which is so important for you, our shareholders. We spoke about a number of key points in our press release and with Helve and his teams, we have been really working tirelessly to come up with a 3 year strategy for Solocal as a group, so that we can create value that benefits our shareholders and which will help grow our company. That is our top priority. So that's just a few introductory remarks that I wanted to share with you today. Obviously, I will be here for this morning's presentations and I will now hand over the floor to Herve to present the results.
Philippe, thank you very much. So what are the key messages that we have for the first half of twenty twenty one? So as Philippe just mentioned, we have a number of changes in management and governance over the past few months. I won't go over them again. There are a few major points that I want to focus on in terms of 2021 and business.
First and foremost, our revenue in Q2 is stable compared to 2020 and that is a positive sign that we're seeing there. What that shows is that our business model is starting to bear fruits and to be in a virtuous cycle. Because of that, we can now have end of June landing in 2021 with revenue, which is only back 5% compared to 2020. We also have a client base, this is the 2nd point, a client base that is stabilized for the Q3 in a row. Now I don't think it's really worth going back over the churn that we had to deal with over the past few years, but I think this is just a positive sign that we have a stabilized client base.
I think it's such a fundamental point and because of that we will be able to have better forecast for growth in the coming weeks months. Underlying all that is that we have an overall decrease in churn rates. Obviously, we can focus on the fact that we have good KPIs that show that. We also have stable ARPA, ARPA which is in line with our business forecasts. Olivier will tell us more about our learning just a little later, but what I could say is that we can see is that we have an overall gross margin of 89% and a 26% EBITDA margin at the end of June 2021.
So to conclude, to talk about the business model overall, our subscription based business model, it is supporting the robust nature of our business portfolio and our income. We have investments in terms of customer service, which are really starting to turn back a positive return on investment, be it in terms of customer retention rate, change, customer satisfaction. And yet there are still many challenges that are yet to be overcome and we will strive to overcome them in the coming weeks. So that is what I wanted to say to you as just a few introductory remarks for the presentation. What I would now like to suggest is that we focus on our financial results for that over to Olivier.
Now, thank you very much. Hello to each and every one of you. Throughout this presentation for the first half results, there are 4 key items to bear in mind as Alve mentioned. 1st and foremost, our revenue, it's stabilized in the Q2, which meant that we were able to limit the overall drop of revenue and we limited it from going from minus 10% to minus 5% for the first half. And this has been a number of years that the group hasn't been able to stabilize its revenue, but we have managed to do so.
Also in terms of secured revenue, we will talk about this at greater length a little later on in the presentation. RUB 365,000,000 as of 30th June 2021. This is compared to €388,000,000 at the end of June 2020. Moving on, €56,500,000 in EBITDA in H1 2021. Now this is back compared to H1 2020, but is strongly up compared to what we saw in the first half overall as 2021.
This is predominantly due to the impact that we saw from government assistance in the first half of twenty twenty. That was non recurrent items there. And that has a positive impact for 2020, which we currently compare to 2021. Also positive cash flow generation in H1 2021, which means that we've been able to have good liquidity levels €71,000,000
in all.
Also, you would have seen in our press release that we that came out in July, we were able to pay back some €6,000,000 in RCF in and that's planned, sorry, for September 2021, €3,000,000 in cash, €3,000,000 in stock. Let's now look at some of the main revenue indicators. 1st and foremost, let's just have a few reminders. Our sales that is something that we calculate in terms of order intake. So we see that the impact of that is something that can be calculated over 12 to 18 months.
So when we want to look at revenue, this is actually a reflection of past business, but doesn't reflect current business. Order intake, it tends to represent just an overall dynamic, a sales dynamic. And that's what I want to say just as a forward before we get into the heart of the matter. So let's now look at order backlog. Order backlog for June 2021, it's actually 5% down compared to 31st March 2021.
This is under what we expected and this is what we released in the press release on the 29th June this year. So because this performance is under expectations, this can be explained for 2 by 2 main reasons. 1st, and Herve will touch on this a little later, is that we faced a number of difficulties in the field by our sales teams, because they had to adapt to a business model that was on acquisition based as opposed to renewal based, which we said were previous years. The second effect is because we had a 3rd lockdown in the month of April where schools were closed down for a part of the month, which had a negative impact on our sales. That said, we have a number of positive items I could focus on.
As we said earlier, stabilized revenue, and you can see on the bottom right there, this is we have a number of quarters where we haven't been able to have a solid stable revenue, but we are finally getting there. We also have a penetration rate for our subscription based model, which is represented by about 87% of our orders. What that means is that we have much more visibility for the coming months in terms of revenue. And lastly, thanks to our sales, we have 26% extra of revenue for the coming 12 months compared to the past 12 months. As I'm sure you're all aware of, we look at a key indicator, secured revenue for the year.
Now let's just look at what that means. Not many businesses do that, but we do it because it gives us good visibility for annual revenue. So the way we calculate this is by looking at revenue, revenue for which we are certain, so revenue that will definitely come in over the year. Now this is not taking into account any acquisitions or any contracts for which the renewal is set to come during the half, but which didn't wasn't actually renewed. So when we look at that, we have revenue of €215,000,000 and order backlog of €266,000,000 And what that means is that we have a revenue conversion for the next 6 months of €150,000,000 So that gives us an overall secured revenue of €365,000,000 by the end of the year.
Obviously, if we also take into account all of the renewal contract renewals that will come into effect during the second half, these are automatic renewals I'm talking about, then that figure will obviously be much higher. Secured revenue is actually a little down compared to last year by €23,000,000 But that means because of the 31st March, it was actually down €52,000,000 So what that shows is we are dropping we are lowering the gap and that shows that we are moving closer and closer to a more stabilized revenue. Now let's look at a business by business breakdown of revenue. So Solocal for the first half of twenty twenty one is still considerably hit by the drop in sales, the drop in sales that we saw in 2020 because of the health crisis. Our order intake dropped by about €110,000,000 from 2019 to 2020.
So in the first half of twenty twenty one and the first quarter reflected that drop in order intake, which had a delayed effect on our revenues. Our products can be broken down into 3 ranges. We have Connect, which is our digital range. We have our sites, It's aptly named. And also we have Booster.
Booster is for all of the digital advertising business that we have. So those three businesses change quite differently over the first half. Connect, up 18.6 percent, which is quite considerable. So that's up compared to the first half of twenty twenty. We also saw that there was quite an interesting change there for our website.
And also, we are starting to bear the to reap the benefits from all of the work that we did in 2019 on completely overhauling that business line. And that was for Boostr. But if we move on to website, website is a little back compared to last year. I'm sure you can all remember that 2020 was a year that was considerably hit by the fact that we had our sales teams that weren't too sure of how to sell that specific offer. But that is completely behind us now and Helve will touch on that a little later.
Another point that we can touch on is that in the Q1, Q1 had a nonrecurring item that impacted our revenue, but that has been restated, which means that we're actually slightly up in terms of revenue for websites. Booster's Boost is still down 12.4% compared to last year. And what that means is that advertising budgets are limited and our professional customer bases have chosen to drop their advertising budgets, obviously, because the health crisis has been becoming more prolonged. And I think this is perfectly reflected by the fact that a number of our customers had to close-up business for a short or if not a long time and that has had a drastic effect on the overall advertising budgets. And this is why our 215,000,000 dropped for the Q1 of Q1 2021.
So how does this all affect our EBITDA? Well, I'm sure you all remember H1 2020 €74,000,000 Now that's compared to €57,000,000 this year. So why is there such a drop? There are 2 main reasons why. I'm sure you remember in Q2 2020, as part of the first lockdown, the government put in place a number of financial assistance packages to help companies pay those employees who were on short term contracts or partial unemployment.
So we were able to utilize those subsidies for and we got €13,000,000 That's €9,000,000 in personal fees, but also there were a number of indirect effects because, for example, a number of these employees who were laid off just for a short amount of time, they weren't attending seminars, they didn't have any fees that they had to claim. So that's why we also saw a drop there. Negative 13%, non recurrent. So therefore, the overall basis to compare these 2 doesn't quite pair up because again these were non recurrent effects. We also saw a drop in order intake for the first half of twenty twenty.
And this is why we can see that this had an impact on the following quarters, which means that we overall have a drop of €12,000,000 and in gross margins, down 10. But aside that, we were able to have a positive impact on cost savings to have a positive €6,000,000 in cost savings. So therefore, when we compare the 2 different rates, we have been we now have recurring EBITDA H1 2021, which actually reflects all of the elements that I just mentioned to you. If we now look at our profit and loss in greater detail, you can see that there was a drop in revenue, which is reflected there. But also right down the bottom of the profit and loss, we have all of the sales and divestments that we had, for example, MAPI and QDQ that came into effect in the first half of twenty twenty.
And also we have the sale of all of our print business, which had an impact in 2020 as well. So that means we have an overall drop of 5%, as we said, recurrent EBITDA down €56,000,000 We have non recurrent items, which are actually positive for the first half of twenty twenty one. So these non recurrent items, what this is, for example, the provisions that we had to put into effect for the 2018, 2019 redundancy package, which we are paying out just the last installments of that, which meant that we have an overall operating profit of €34,000,000 So financial results is considerably down with financial costs at €26,000,000 in the first half of twenty twenty and we only had €14,000,000 in financial costs. So why is there a drop there? Well, I'm sure you remember financial restructuring that meant that we could drop the nominal part of that quite considerably.
That was one reason why. And also the coupon rate which would drop from 10% to 8% for most of our debt. So because of that, we have an overall consolidated net income for H1 2021 of €11,500,000 Moving on to another item, I'm sure you remember that we made a commitment to drop CapEx by €44,000,000 from €44,000,000 to €35,000,000 and we have done it. We have been able to drop it by from €22,000,000 last year to €17,000,000 for the first half. And all of our investments are focusing were being focused on our strategic areas.
Now another key feature for this half is that we have been able to stabilize our cash and cash flow and cash generation. So over the past 2 years, the past 2 years that I've been here, this is the first time that we have been able to actually generate cash over 1 half year. So we've been able to generate cash despite an EBITDA that is dropping, but how so? Well, this is because we have been able to work on our working capital requirements. And I'm sure that you remember that the WCR for receivables for customer receivables is actually quite an important factor here.
So the WCR receivables is a key reflection of our sales activity and you can see it in the first half of twenty twenty. The WCR receivables was €50,000,000 down. So €50,000,000 that reflects the overall drop, the massive drop in order intake that we saw in the Q2 of 2020. But then that stabilized in 2021 for the Q1. And that is the reason why we have been able to double the overall cash flow for recurring free cash flow from 2017 up to roughly €34,000,000 That's because in the half, we paid back €10,000,000 for that we had to owe back to the government and we have €9,000,000 remaining to be repaid between now and the end of 2021.
In terms of non recurring items, euros 7,000,000 were disbursed in H1 twenty twenty one. Where does that euros 7,000,000 come from? Well, it comes from paying off the redundancy plan from the 2018, 2019 redundancy plan. Now €7,000,000 that's not the main focus area. The main focus area is that we have still €3,000,000 to be repaid after 30th June 2021, €225,000,000 for the company.
So really that's showing that we are at the end of the tunnel. And then I'm sure you can all remember that in the others line, we also include the IFRS 16 cash impact, so it is a rents for our head office and also for our different sites around France, Bordeaux, Rennes, Angouleme, these are our main sites. And those are covered in the others line and that represents roughly €10,000,000 per quarter. So just under €20,000,000 sorry €10,000,000 for the half €20,000,000 for the year. And that means that we have a net cash of €71,000,000 as right now at the end of 30th June 2021.
I'm sure that you saw clearly at the beginning that we are going to continue as part of the partial repayment of the RCF as announced in the financial restructuring plan. So we wanted to pay back part of that between €5,000,000 to €10,000,000 30th September 2021, same will happen again in 2022 and so on and so forth. So we were able to choose what amounts we're going to pay off between €5,000,000 and €10,000,000 and also how we're going to do it either is cash or in new shares. We chose to pay back €6,000,000 €3,000,000 of which is in cash, €3,000,000 in new shares. So the calculation of the number of shares to be issued will be based on the weighted BWAC rate from the August to September period.
So the overall RCF is now at €4,000,000 end of September 2021.
One key item, this is the first time that we actually pay back our debt in cash. About €3,000,000 doesn't look like much, but it is a strong signal we're sending. Now regarding the financial structure at the end of June, so prior to the reimbursement of the 6,000,000, we have a gross debt of €258,000,000 cash €71,000,000 So we have a net debt of €187,000,000 And the leverage ratio that is EBITDA over net debt as defined by the banking regulations, a multiple of 2 times 3 2.3. The ratio between EBITDA and the financial interest in 12 months is 3.3. That's the interest coverage ratio.
So we have to move room for maneuver, what is known as headroom, at end December 2021. I'll give the floor to Herve now, who will give you more details about the business as such and the trends as they appear. Well, thank you, Olivier. So regarding the business review, let us look at 6 highlights in the first half of twenty twenty one. Four items are to be mentioned.
First, we have a customer base, well, a stable customer base for the 3rd quarter running. I'll get back to that in a minute. We have confirmed a significant reduction in churn. Now there we are ahead of our plan. So, so far so good.
ARPA is in line with our expectations and our renewal base is growing. At end June 2021, 89% of clients have decided to go for subscription, that is auto renewal. Now there are 2 items I would like to draw your attention to. Number 1, well, client acquisition is a challenge, and I'll get back to that in a minute. And then the Paris Zone leadership has been challenged as well.
Now that's in terms of single visits, but it's not just that. We also have a regulatory context that has changed recently back in April of this year. Now regarding the customer base, what does it look like? Well, it's stable at 314,000 customers. That base and indeed, this slide will draw your attention to 2 things.
Number 1, we have a good way of halting any sign of decline. Churn in particular was significantly down compared to 2020. Significant efforts were made by our teams to make sure that our customers remain loyal especially our distance salespeople. But win back that is getting all customers back is working as well and we will be investing there as well. Now, so these are the 2 strong points, win backs up, churn down.
But what is not satisfactory is acquiring new customers, the volume of new customers that have been roped in as it were. We only acquired 4,000 new clients customers in H1, and that is not satisfactory. And that is where we really need to work for in the weeks to come. Our plan, as I said, is right on track, in line with our expectations. Now then another indicator and that is a similar trend.
It's a positive trend both in terms of churn rates. So that churn rate was down, but also retention rate is up. Churn landing at end June is 13.9%. And you have to remember that at end December 2020, it stood at 19%. So a significant effort again was made there.
Churn can still be improved. We can bring it down. I think we can gain a couple of points in terms of churn. But the point here is that why and why it is that people leave us or why do they stay. At Solocal, 60% of churn is due to the sale itself.
It is upstream in our customer journey. This is where people turn away. So it means we have to train our salespeople. We have to they have to be able to educate our customers, prospects. Maybe it looks maybe the offer is too complicated and that may be why people are sort of tend to shy away.
It is essential for our customers to understand what it is they have purchased and how it's going to work for them. So that's why people turn away. Retention works well. I mean, 54%, I mean, it's already well, by the way, to be able to retain a customer, but it's even better to be able to hang on to that customer's associated value because, of course, it's not just that people are still customers, they have to bring in business. And so what we have to look at as the revenue brought in by individual customers, at least those who initially said they were thinking of moving away.
So it's not just being able to keep them, to retain them, but also being able to keep revenue from them. So I said there were 6 highlights here and there's one which is a significant change in the regulatory context and that is the way in which we work out our audiences on page June. Since December of last year, the French authority CNIL has published a number of directives regarding the protection of privacy, especially private data. So how does what's the consequences of that? One thing is that from now on, we will not be in a position to consolidate audience of our partners using the well, the 3rd party cookies.
3rd party cookies are still allowed, but and this is a big but, customers I mean, the web surfers have got to give their explicit consent. And so that makes it very difficult to work out of audiences because we haven't got the wherewithal anymore. Now is that an issue? Is that a risk? Well, this may surprise you, but I think this is a great opportunity.
Why? Well, Page Joon is a great piece of media, but it is a very powerful search engine and a very relevant and focused search engine because it is out there to search your local answer. And indeed, queries and searches may well be the key indicator when it comes to working out the effectiveness of Page Joon. Now we are now in a position where we indeed can track searches. And in fact, we this is the new indicator as opposed to actual visits.
So searches now searches, you should note that this is of course, this is not a pageant monopoly. This is not an exclusive item. All the search engines have been monitoring searches, both searches or requests. I mean, Google is, of course, the number one provider and it publishes its numbers on requests and not on audiences or visits. That is what it reports on.
And so on the pro form a basis, if we look at H1 2019, H1 2020 and H1 2021, what can be monitored here is the activity of our Page Joon search engine, see how much it has been used. Now, well, it looks as though it's improving, but make no mistake. The 2020 basis was highly favorable because we are right In a lockdown, you had close downs, I mean, especially shops and restaurants. I mean, that is a critical aspect of our business in Parisian. So, of course, we can be content I mean, we can be happy with an improvement on that, but the comparison basis, of course, isn't right.
But I mean, that is our own improvement. But vis a vis the competition, now there is an improvement in performance. And you can see that the SIO work we're doing and the work we're doing with Google has brought us to that level of performance. Now the various indicators have been mentioned earlier, but let's focus on 3 themes, which to me are highly representative of what we've experienced in H1 websites, large accounts and the enterprise sales force. Website.
Website is a fundamental building block for the digital services solutions. We have 3 offers, the entry level, entry level, then you have premium and that is where you have the largest numbers and then privilege, vertical privilege is the high value, high end offer. So this site website offer has basically 2 underlying principles. Number 1, onboarding. I mentioned this during the AGM.
You may remember that we shall make no exception whether this be a privilege or an entry level or high level site, we will be on boarding site, we will be onboarding our customers. In other words, we will make sure that we will see them through the publication of their digital window. This is fundamental. We will not discriminate against our more modest customers. That's number 1.
And then there's no compromise between content and the technological solution. We some will focus just on content, others on the technological solution. But our ambition is to deliver on both fronts. We want to provide an end to end solution, which is ready to use, which is ready to go for our sites. I mean, we have to offer a turnkey solution.
Now why are we focusing on sites, on websites? Well, as Olivier said earlier on, we did encounter a number of challenges in the area in this area. Having said that, what's the profile of site owners at Surocal? Well, number 1, 80% of website customers have at least one additional product. I mean, it goes to show on top of the website, which means that the website is a huge penetration weapon.
Number 2 is ARPA. ARPA now stands at almost twice Solocas' standard ARPA. So a huge indicator there. And then digital customers, people who go for the website, are key players in Solocal's ecosystem because they use I mean, with our Solocal manager tool, they use 30% more. They make a 30% higher use of all our tools available on the platform.
And so this reflects the ease of use. And indeed, we want to make sure that our customers' satisfaction in this respect that is the ease of use of our platforms is key to our plan. So what have we done about it just to make sure we do provide this level of satisfaction? Well, number 1, we want to make sure the websites, we have a tunnel effect for the customer. And the tunnel effect, of course, is has brings with it a huge risk of people pulling out, of canceling the whole thing.
And so when and this is why we have to make sure the lead times are as short as possible, because during the question, the uncertainty period people might pull out. And then of course, the sooner that we go online, the quicker we recognize the associated revenue. So it's of course our own interest as well. And then we also had to improve increase our capacity. We were looking at 1,000 premium sites at end of June, and we got to 935.
So we're pretty close to the target, which means we're just about doubled on delivery numbers compared to Q1 from Q1 to Q2. But of course, you also have to know that this the website has become the site where people move up from premium to from essential to premium and from premium to privilege. In other words, this is where people upgrade their offer. So we do need to push that. Now in the first half of this year, we found a number of limitations.
We found it difficulty to keep progressing in terms of new customers. We have what are known as hunters amongst the full time employees. Of course, when things started off earlier in the year, we found that in Q2, well, we found that the transformation rate was rather disappointing because we need 6 appointments to sign one contract. And in this business with the where the customers are small companies, if you target your customers right, normally you should be able to have one transformation rate one transformation, one contract signed for with only 4 appointments. So we still had 6 appointments.
So the performance was under I'm not saying our hunters are no good, but it means we need to train them better, we need to manage these people better, because at this stage, while they started off encouragingly, promisingly, it's still they're still not efficient enough. And this is a long term project, because what we really want we are really leaning on these hunters, on our hunter team to acquire new business. And in some areas, the model works just fine. I mean, some of our people really have achieved significant performances in terms of acquisitions, in new customer acquisition. That's the hunters.
But if you look at the traditional sales force, in April 2021, well, they found themselves facing a completely new deal. I mean, this was a complete sea change in there in the way they were doing business, because by April 2021, all migrations were completed, which meant that instead of having a situation where they were renewing subscriptions, which had been their job since the beginning. Now suddenly, instead of renewing existing customers, they had to recruit new customers, they have to sell new subscription programs. And it meant that we had to support them or to train them and make sure they were able to they were equal to the task. Well, we can't do this sort of on a collective basis.
It was on an individual basis. Each person had to be assessed. Some of our people stay close to our customers, because we need to have this continued presence. We need to monitor our customers. We need to make sure that especially the high value customers, we can't just let them go on automatic pilot as it were.
And then those who have this in them that is to acquire new customers rather than keeping existing customers happy. But we need to provide them with the additional skills needed for that. But regardless of whether they are hunters or sort of a traditional salespeople, we will have to revisit our contact plan, the way in which we address our customers, because the more we help our salespeople target prospects and new customers, The better we do this, the better our model will perform. And this will become a virtuous cycle if we can make it happen. So that was item number 2.
Item number 3 is the large accounts. The end of 2021 ended quite well, but that account has to be our growth driver at Solocal. If you look at the slide, you can see the entire range is represented here. Otosuyo, which is one of the largest networks of car technical inspections, automotive technical inspections, we worked with them on digital advertising, boosting their network. Now you have to see the reason we got an award here was no coincidence.
No, this is because we produce 7,000 new contacts a month for all 280 auto serial stations. And so that is quite a performance. And of course, the OtoSure people have certainly seen that there's a definite value for money here, a good return on that investment. Now Connect Reso was completely revamped in H1 202021 and sure enough that has brought in results. We won a new large account, Cogent, which is a wellness restaurant network, and they are delighted to work with us.
And then there's another significant item and not everybody realizes I mean, we're not seen to be a data management player. And yet, there you have LACOST, well known in the garment industry. They want us to go through their own customer base and optimize that database. Now this is because of our know how in markets. And that particular know how means that we should be in a position to help our customers gain more value out of their data their customer data.
So what are the challenges to come? Well, on the 20th October, in a few months' time, we will be, of course, presenting the performance for Q3 Q3 2021. This will be our chance to share with you the 3 year plan, the 3 year strategy as well as the associated business plan. But I mean, before then, I felt there were 3 things, 3 parts of our strategy, which I felt we should share with you, things that we're already working on. Number 1, our customers, I mean, know your customer and see how that knowledge can help boost our own operations.
We have to be in a position better to understand our customers because when we understand them better, this means that we can understand their needs better. We can we are in a position to identify their expectations, but more to the point, we can provide customer satisfaction. So that is key. But that again is data management. We have to manage our customer data and that needs to be that has to be geared up in the months to come for that work to be more effective.
The second strategic direction is to move from a product proposition to a digital solutions proposition. And for the months I've been working with SOREL CAR, listening to our employees and our contacts, I look I wonder what is our profile. At the end of the day, we are in a sort of a SaaS company, a software as a service company. And if that is the case, if we if that is really our actual DNA, well, there are 3 conditions that need to be met. Number 1, we have to offer personalized support at all SaaS companies go all hog in terms of customer support.
Then creating perceived value that is our customers should be happy. They should be happy that they got what they wanted and they make it known. That is what is done as dashboarding. In other words, we have customers who are completely supported throughout the digital strategy. They we have to be constantly trying to meet not just meet customers' needs, but also preempt them.
And then, of course, we have to come up with new products, of course, digital support, digital advertising, but then new services, what we call transactional and relational services, again using IT. But that shows that our customers have their own ecosystems, but we have to increase to optimize the use value of that ecosystem so that they realize they can make the most of the treasure they have in their hands with their customer data. And then, of course, we have to go back to the basic function of Page 1. It is a media. It is, of course, a platform, but it is an instrument.
It is it can deliver performance. But what how can we improve the positioning of Parisian? How can we make it the incontrovertible player? Well, I believe there are 2 aspects to it. Number 1, customers visiting Pajon may need to be reassured and they may also need sort of security.
They feel that we have to provide that sense of security. And so that asset, Pajon, should be the sort of the 3rd party, sort of honest broker who will ensure the effectiveness of their relational and transactional work. If that is the case, our service will be much, much more relevant because if we can achieve that kind of relationship, we can certainly become very effective indeed. Okay. So that is for me.
And let's move on to the conclusions of this presentation. As Olivier said so himself, stable revenue in Q2 2021 means that our H1 revenue is down only 5%, pretty stable. Secured revenue with our renewal sort of subscription model stands at €366,000,000 at 30 June 2021. EBITDA is confirmed at about €120,000,000 And again, we were able to stabilize our customer base over the year. Now the next dates, we will be presenting the numbers for Q3 and then we will be of course be presenting the 3 year strategic plan by the same token.
Thank you for your attention. And now the time has come for questions if you have any.
There are no questions in the lineup. We have one question from Mr. Erik Lang from Finance Connect. Yes, can everyone hear me? Yes, we can hear you Erik.
Yes. Sorry, I was just a little unsure about whether my phone was working or not. I had a question. My first one is in terms of the plan that you represented saying that in October, will you be needing extra financing for that October plan? And a underlying question is why have you chosen to pay back half of the CFI in shares, which given that your share price is considerably low for some people?
Well, just on the 3 year plan. So for the 3 year plan, then we aren't working on the basis that we will need or that we need any additional funding. We won't need any extra funding. It will simply because currently we can't actually take on further debt. So quite clearly, what we are going to do is that we are going to base our 3 year plan on a financial structure that we know of currently and with the financial structuring and that's the only financial structuring that we will have.
So that's the first point. Also talking about RCF payback, why have we chosen to do a fifty-fifty split between cash and shares? 1st and foremost, and I'll say it again, it's the first time in some 10 years that Solocal has been able to pay back some of its debt in cash. So that's a first key take home message. So why did we focus for the other half in shares?
Well, this is a facility that we've been able to do because of banking regulations. And this is the regulations and agreements that we came to with the debt holders. And the reason for that is because when you look at the €3,000,000 it dilutes the impact that we will have in terms of shares. But that impact will actually only be between 1% to 2%, so it's minuscule. So our duty for Herve and myself, we need to ensure that we take all necessary provisions to ensure that we don't that we are faced with a liquidity issue.
So we're not talking about just €3,000,000 here or there. When we look at the coming 12 months of business, what we can clearly see is that €3,000,000 isn't really going to change most, but really when we look at the 1% to 2% change in terms of our share rate, share price, it's not that major. Well, it's quite unfortunate because it is so minor. So you say it's a 1% to 2% change, but sure, but that's just guesswork here and there. But what if the share rate drops by $0.10 then that's going to be a huge percentage change because you're basing an increase of capital based on a predefined share price.
And I really fail to see what you're actually what you're trying to get at there because as we saw in the past, they are basing current finance needs on a future share price. I just really think that because it is so much on that, you haven't chosen to act differently. Because clearly, we could you could have gone for just €3,000,000 cash repayment or just to pay back €3,000,000 Now, Eric, I just want to jump in there because we had said that we're going to pay back between €5,000,000 €10,000,000 We had to pay back between €5,000,000 €10,000,000 be it cash or shares. So in terms of RCF, we've been able to consolidate that in midterm loans. And we had a pay reimbursement schedule that we had to uphold.
So we had the choice between €3,000,000 in cash or otherwise. And we said we want to send this as a clear positive message, historic message, because we could have diluted the share base, but I think you attended the general assembly and we had a number of questions on that. So we asked for the authorization from our shareholders for much higher rates than what we're talking about here. So we said we want to give a positive message. I understand and I hear what you're saying there.
And I see that for you, you don't see it as being a good message, but I hear you there. And we think that obviously, if the share price goes up, then the dilution will be even less. Okay. So what I hear you saying there is that you're trying to send a good message that it's a good sign, but given the current state of affairs, then we shouldn't expect to see further dilution of shares by an increase in capital. Is that what you're saying with the new plan?
Yes, that's right. Thank you very much. I think my battery is about to run out, so I will switch over to my computer. We have a question from the webcast from Paul Menigo. He's asking about cookies and consent, required consent.
You spoke about it in terms of page 1. In terms of audience, is that not an issue if you can't measure audience levels? And then what about additional costs given the change of regulation? So to answer the first part of the question in terms of measuring audience levels, so we will be able to continue monitoring that. However, it won't be as precise and comprehensive as it has been so far in terms of raw number of people who have come via our partner sites onto Page Jean, they will not be tracked simply because regulation does not allow us to do so.
But once again, is that a major issue? Well, maybe I could answer that question with my own question. Someone who is using the Internet, who comes to Page 1 and then leaves Page 1 straight away without actually interacting with the website, without carrying out any form of search or request, who in the past were actually counted as a visit, is that worthwhile actually taking into account in our overall figures? Because is that going to change the way we work our research system our search systems? Is it going to change the way we do our business?
Because what we want to do is we want to produce a contact. We want to reach a stage where 1 in every 2 searches becomes a proper contact. And I think when we look at that, I think that people actually carrying out a search via PageRank is much more relevant in terms of indicators for audience levels than just people visiting a website. So that's the first point. 2nd, I think that we need to focus much more on the cost that additional researchers will actually have because I think it's more relevant for us as a business to focus on our search engine business.
And that's where additional costs, additional investments will be and we've actually been doing that for some years now. Well, ladies and gentlemen, given that there are no more questions, I would like to bring this session to a close. Thank you to each and every one of you.